Welcome to the Studio
This is a complete self-practice environment for the IELTS Academic test. It contains one full practice set for each of the four skills, in authentic exam formats, with timers that enforce real exam timing, automatic marking, model answers, and an AI-style speaking examiner that asks questions aloud and listens to your answers through the microphone.
How to use it daily (45 minutes): follow the weekly rotation — Listening on Day 1, Reading on Day 2, Writing Task 1 on Day 3, Task 2 on Day 4, Speaking on Day 5, and vocabulary review on Day 6. Do the task under timing first, mark it honestly, then study every mistake. The mistake study is where the band improvement lives.
What the exam looks like
| Paper | Time | Content | What it really tests |
|---|---|---|---|
| Listening | 30 min | 4 recordings, 40 questions, played once | Sustained attention and spelling under pressure |
| Reading | 60 min | 3 academic passages, 40 questions | Paraphrase-spotting and time discipline |
| Writing | 60 min | Task 1 report (150+ words) + Task 2 essay (250+ words) | Structure, clarity and answering the question asked |
| Speaking | 11–14 min | Interview + 2-minute talk + discussion | Fluency without fillers; extending answers |
Understanding bands
Bands run 1–9. Most doctoral admissions ask for 7.0 overall with no skill below 6.5. Band 7 means “good user”: operational command with occasional inaccuracies. It is earned by discipline, not brilliance — counted words, managed minutes, answered questions, legible spelling.
The four assessment criteria (Writing & Speaking)
- Task response / achievement — did you answer exactly what was asked, fully?
- Coherence and cohesion — does it flow? Paragraphs with one idea each; linkers used naturally, not decoratively.
- Lexical resource — range and precision of vocabulary; paraphrasing instead of repetition.
- Grammatical range and accuracy — complex sentences attempted, errors that do not block meaning.
Technical requirements
Use Chrome or Microsoft Edge. The Listening tab speaks with your browser's built-in voices (Edge's “Natural” voices sound best — pick them in the voice menus). The Speaking examiner needs microphone permission and an internet connection (browsers process speech recognition in the cloud). Nothing you type or say is stored on any server — everything lives in your browser tab and disappears when you close it, so copy anything you want to keep into your journal.
The error log — your most important notebook
After every marked exercise, write each miss in a notebook with four columns: the question, your answer, the correct answer, and the reason (spelling / paraphrase missed / speed / attention / grammar). Review the log every Day 6. IELTS scores rise when reasons stop repeating, not when hours accumulate.
Listening · Part 1 — Form Completion
A caller enquires about a professional training course. In the real exam the recording plays once only — this studio enforces the same rule. Read questions 1–8 first, then press play. Write no more than two words and/or a number for each answer.
Tip: for the most natural audio, open this file in Microsoft Edge (its "Natural" voices are excellent) or Chrome (choose the "Google UK English" voices). The page picks the best voices it finds automatically — you can change them above.
Enrolment Form
Listening strategy — read this once
- Read ahead ruthlessly. Before the audio starts, read the questions and predict the answer type: a day? a price? a name? Prediction turns listening into confirmation.
- The recording gives distractors on purpose. “We had an August date but that one is full” — the answer is September. Expect one rejected option before the real answer.
- Spelling counts as correctness. A right answer spelled wrong is wrong. Practise the alphabet, numbers, dates and email addresses aloud.
- Never stop on a missed question. Losing one answer is a point; losing your place is a section. Leave it, move with the audio, return at the end.
- Respect the word limit. “No more than two words and/or a number” means three words scores zero, even if correct.
Raw score to approximate band (Listening & Reading)
| Correct /40 | 39–40 | 37–38 | 35–36 | 32–34 | 30–31 | 26–29 | 23–25 | 18–22 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Band | 9.0 | 8.5 | 8.0 | 7.5 | 7.0 | 6.5 | 6.0 | 5.5 |
This 8-question part scales the same way: 6/8 is band-7 pace. Log every miss in your error log with its reason.
Reading strategy — read this once
- Budget: 20 minutes per passage, including transferring answers. This studio's timer trains exactly that.
- Skim first (2–3 min): read the title, first sentence of each paragraph, last paragraph. Build a map of where things are; do not read for detail yet.
- True/False/Not Given is a logic test. TRUE = the passage says it (usually paraphrased). FALSE = the passage says the opposite. NOT GIVEN = the passage is silent — your outside knowledge is a trap here, not a help.
- The exam is a paraphrase hunt. Questions almost never reuse the passage's words. “Recommended by international financial institutions” may appear as “promoted vigorously by”. Log every paraphrase pair that fooled you.
- Answers come in passage order within each question set — use that to locate the next answer's neighbourhood.
- 90-second rule: no question deserves more than 90 seconds on the first pass. Mark, skip, return.
Questions 1–5 · True / False / Not Given
TRUE = agrees with the passage · FALSE = contradicts it · NOT GIVEN = no information.
Questions 6–9 · Multiple choice
Questions 10–13 · Sentence completion (no more than two words)
Writing strategy — read this once
Task 1 structure (always the same four moves)
- 1. Paraphrase the prompt in one sentence (never copy it — copied words are not counted).
- 2. Overview: the single biggest trend, with no numbers. Examiners look for this sentence first; without it, band 7 is impossible.
- 3–4. Two detail paragraphs: selected key figures (start, end, fastest change, any reversal) with comparisons. Report — never explain causes or give opinions.
Task 2 — know your essay type before you write
- Opinion (“to what extent do you agree?”) — state your position in the introduction and argue it in both body paragraphs.
- Discussion (“discuss both views and give your opinion”) — one paragraph per view, opinion woven in and confirmed in the conclusion. The practice prompt below is this type.
- Problem–solution — one paragraph of causes/problems, one of solutions.
- Two-part question — answer each part in its own paragraph; missing one part caps the score.
Plan for 5 minutes before writing — position, two paragraph topics, one example each. Your workplace experience is legitimate, powerful example material. Task 2 carries two-thirds of the writing score: if time collapses, protect Task 2.
Describe the chart
The chart below shows the share of government payments made electronically in one South Asian country between 2016 and 2024. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Electronic share of total government payments, 2016–2024 (illustrative data)
Exam conditions: spellcheck is OFF while you write — exactly like the real IELTS. Finish first, then check. Checking sends your text to LanguageTool's free service.
Self-check against the band descriptors
- Overview sentence stating the overall trend, before any numbers
- Key features selected (start, end, fastest change) — not every figure listed
- At least two comparisons (e.g., 2016 vs 2024; before vs after 2020)
- Trend vocabulary varied: rose / climbed / accelerated / a sevenfold increase
- No opinions — Task 1 reports; it never explains or recommends
Model answer (read after writing, never before)
In 2016, electronic transactions accounted for just 12% of all government payments, and growth was initially modest, reaching 20% by 2018. Thereafter the pace quickened markedly: the share nearly doubled to 37% in 2020 and continued to accelerate, climbing to 60% in 2022.
By 2024 the figure stood at 84%, a sevenfold increase on the 2016 level. The most striking feature is the acceleration after 2020, during which the electronic share gained more percentage points in four years than in the entire preceding period, suggesting that adoption, once established, reinforced itself.
Essay
Exam conditions: spellcheck is OFF while you write — exactly like the real IELTS. Finish first, then check.
Self-check against the band descriptors
- Clear position stated in the introduction and held throughout
- One paragraph per view, each with a developed example (your FCGO experience is legitimate material)
- Linkers vary: however / by contrast / a further consideration / on balance
- Complex sentences attempted: conditionals, relative clauses, passives
- Conclusion answers the question — no new arguments
Model answer (read after writing)
Supporters of strict requirements point out that voluntary adoption produces fragmentary records. If some offices use an official treasury platform while others keep spreadsheets, national accounts become a patchwork, and leaders make decisions on incomplete numbers. A mandate creates a single source of truth, strengthens audit trails, and signals that digital working is a duty rather than a preference.
Opponents respond that people comply with the letter of a rule while defeating its purpose. Staff who find a system slow or threatening may delay entries, share passwords, or maintain parallel records, so the official data reflects performance rather than reality. In this view, mandates without consultation simply push non-compliance out of sight, which is more dangerous than open resistance because it is harder to detect.
In my opinion, both views describe real phenomena, but they are not equally fundamental. Mandates are necessary, since public data cannot depend on individual preference; however, they are not sufficient. Governments that pair requirements with training, reliable infrastructure and visible fairness in how the data is used obtain genuine compliance, whereas those that rely on compulsion alone obtain its imitation.
In conclusion, official systems should indeed be mandatory, but a mandate is the beginning of implementation, not the end of it.
Speaking strategy — read this once
- Part 1 answers are 3–4 sentences: direct answer + reason + small example. One-word answers cannot demonstrate language.
- Part 2: use the full two minutes. Structure your minute of notes as the cue card's four bullets; stopping at 60 seconds costs fluency marks. If you run dry, add: how you felt, what changed afterwards.
- Part 3 is an opinions exam, not a knowledge exam. There are no wrong opinions, only undeveloped ones. Formula: position → reason → example → concession (“although, admittedly...”).
- Silence beats fillers. A one-second pause sounds thoughtful; “um” sounds hesitant. The analyzer below counts your fillers — watch the number fall week by week.
- Correct yourself confidently. “— or rather, what I mean is —” is band-7 behaviour; ignoring your own errors is not.
The Examiner
Press Start interview. The examiner asks each question aloud, then opens the microphone and transcribes your answer live. Press Done answering when you finish (or stay silent for a few seconds). Works best in Chrome or Edge with an internet connection (browser speech recognition needs it). Allow microphone access when asked.
You should say:
— what the system is
— when you started using it
— what you use it for
and explain how it changed the way you work.
You will get 1 minute to prepare (make paper notes), then the microphone opens for your 2-minute talk.
Live transcript
Analysis of your answer
AI feedback works when this studio runs inside Claude. Opened as a local file, copy your transcript from above and paste it to Claude with: “Give me IELTS Speaking feedback with band estimates for fluency, lexical resource, grammar and pronunciation.”